Field of the Invention
The disclosure generally relates to oilfield equipment and processes. More specifically, the disclosure relates to equipment and processes used for placing tubing in and out of a subterranean oil or gas well.
Description of the Related Art
The search for hydrocarbons of oil and gas routinely includes use of platforms on which the drilling and production equipment are placed. For remote locations, such as offshore locations, the platform often includes crew quarters and support facilities. Operations from the platform can include drilling the initial bore for a well and casing it, installation of production tubing and well head equipment, follow up efforts to drill additional wells, production of the well, and periodic intervention work on existing wells to assist in production and sometimes to shut down the well. Floor space is limited and so some equipment can be elevated to leave a smaller footprint at the working surface. A lift frame can be used in the field to elevate such equipment and to handle maneuvering of tubing that is inserted into the wellbore. In many of these operations, pipe and other tubing can be inserted into or pulled from the wellbore using a coiled tubing unit with an injector head. The injector head can be specially designed to grip the coiled tubing with a drive system that provides the tractive effort for inserting and retrieving the tubing from the wellbore. The injector head is typically attached to the platform through the lift frame. With the variations in injector heads of different sizes or from different manufacturers, injector head adapters can be used for the variations. Each injector head adapter represents an expense that is only needed because of the variations. A company in the rental business may have to have dozens of adapters for coiled tubing units with differing injector heads, which can call for a significant investment in adapters, such as of $100,000 to $150,000, or more.
There remains a need to simplify the adapters needed for the variations in injector heads, and to reduce expenditures that heretofore have been perceived as required by at least some in the industry.